Lisa Kay Knits... and Quilts!

 As I am twitching and squirming about, waiting for my Gammill Statler to arrive (two hours and forty minutes to go...), I thought I'd share some pictures of the custom quilt rack that Chris had made for my birthday. It just arrived on Monday. Yes, that is a few days late... but it was being made... to specifications. You gotta love this man! Yes, yes, I have it upside down in the photo. The top of the bars go parallel to the floor, of course. I haven't decided where to hang it. It will have to be on a stud, certainly. It will also take up a fair amount of space, once the four arms are loaded and sort of overlapping each other. How cool is that? It's beautiful. It was made at Kunz Carpentry in Trenton, IL. The workmanship is incredible. Chris said that they liked the design and said they should have made two... one for display in the shop! When Chris was telling me I'd have to wait for my birthday present, he said he had "drafted" something. I didn't figu...

 My dear friend, Babs, made a beautiful beaded ornament for my birthday, focused on the quilting theme. I am amazed at the little scissors and spools of thread, and the workmanship blows me away.  Babs shares my excitement for the long arm arriving this week! Happy Quilting! Lisa Kay

How do you start learning to use a long arm? There are so many teaching resources available, it has been a bit of a fire hose, and often hard to choose. I found a resource I really like, specifically aimed at the Gammill Statler, the long arm that I have on order. The Methodist Hill Quilt Studio has a monthly "Skill Builders Club" from Joyce Lundrigan and Joan Knight that includes piecing and quilting instructions, a video link, and digital designs for the quilting. I joined a couple days before the April period ended (the 15th), and so now I have both April and May instructions. Even better, club members can download previous months, and there are six "Jumpstarter" sets from early subscriptions that teach some basics. I have pieced the first three Jumpstarter tops, January 2019 , February 2019 , and March 2019 , which will give me some great learning pieces to do as part of getting acclimated. Here are my pieced tops, and their plain white backings, queued up for ...

 Things, they are a' changin'... I have been working hard on getting the end of the master bedroom cleaned out to make space for the long arm quilting machine. I had to disassemble and take out the desk, and I took down the hand-quilting frame... which I have to admit I will unlikely use again.   With the bed still in the same place, I expected to have a 6' x 14' space for the 12' frame. That is cutting it pretty close, given the space needed to pass around all sides, loading the quilt, and allowing the machine about 1.5' of travel behind the table. Chris got involved and suggested swapping the bed and the dresser (which was right behind me when taking the photo, above). That made things a little closer together on the "bedroom side" of the room, but added 2.5' to the "quilting side" of the room. Yay! Chris has been a really good sport about the whole thing. He also mounted a shelf for bins... which means I will still have a lot of open ...

Hello after a long hiatus... I have been distracted down a different road, recently, that of quilting. I still knit, also, but quilting seems to be my main passion, lately. I made several last year, even hand quilting two myself, but also having some machine quilted by others (mainly Itchin' To Be Stitchin' in Staunton, IL). I'll include some pictures of last year's quilts at the bottom. It tugs at my "do it yourself" gene to pay someone else to quilt my quilts, but I just haven't been able to manage large quilts on my home sewing machine. I'd really like to get a long arm quilting machine, and I'm looking and scheming, but I'm not quite there. Maybe soon. I'm particularly intrigued by the combination of ruler work and free motion quilting (FMQ) done by Judi Madsen . In addition to her quilting, she and her husband run an on-line shop, Green Fairy Quilts . She's my hero. I've watched all three of her on-line/DVD quilt classes (at ...

Back in late 2007, my mom and I were shopping at the Galleria in St. Louis, and we happened upon this sweater in Brooks Brothers. I had never actually bought anything in Brooks Brothers, and it seemed at little bit "out of my league," to be entirely honest. I thought the pink and brown Fair Isle sweater was the bee's knees, and my mom purchased it for me as my Christmas present that year. While it was my first thing from Brooks Brothers, it wasn't the last. They usually have a few Fair Isle sweaters each year, and I keep an eye on them. It is one of the few stores where I've seen wool Fair Isle sweaters, ready-made. Fair Isle is usually hard to find, often only in two colors, and typically not wool. The wool yarn, to knit it yourself, is generally more expensive than a store-bought sweater (even at Brooks Brothers), and a store-bought sweater is instant gratification! One of the benefits, also, of a store-bought sweater is that they are machine-knit, which all...

I've been trying to figure out a problem with my camera (and trying to lose weight), and I haven't gotten any pictures of anything I made in the last year or so. Now that I've worked through both of those things to various degrees, I figured I'd better catch up on statusing my knitting. My latest sweater is Norah Gaughan's Joyella , an interesting knit out of joined hexagons. I finished another Einstein Coat, this one using alternating colors of Lite Lopi. My first Einstein Coat is posted here and here . I made a simple top-down V-neck cardigan using two colors of Creatively-Dyed Woodbrook, alternating colors for a bit of a transition. I used the "Pink" pattern from Wendy Bernard's "Custom Knits" book, a pattern I've used before, here . I made a Debbie Bliss " Drop Collar Cable Cardigan " with several mods, including changing out the cable, adding a 3-stitch slip stitch edge to the front (a feature I learned on Nan...